


Wait

by That_Girl_Who_Is_WAY_Too_Cheerful



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Angst, Eating Disorders, Gen, Implied/Mentioned Suicide attempt, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Post Season 5, it was meant to be fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:34:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28010973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Girl_Who_Is_WAY_Too_Cheerful/pseuds/That_Girl_Who_Is_WAY_Too_Cheerful
Summary: Lloyd recovers from being possessed, and the other ninja deal with their own issues.
Relationships: Cole & Jay Walker, Cole & Kai & Jay Walker & Zane, Cole & Lloyd Garmadon & Kai & Jay Walker & Zane, P.I.X.A.L./Zane (Ninjago)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	Wait

**Author's Note:**

> Please look at all of the tags I do not want to trigger anyone, there are ED and SH mentions throughout.  
> This was a request from tumblr for _fluff_ but it's super angsty.  
> ENJOY!

They had thought that it would all be fine, now. It had been two weeks, now, their powers were back, Lloyd was back, Morro was gone… But this was anything but fine. In fact, this was very, very bad. 

Kai looked down at his hands in distress. No flame. Not even additional  _ warmth.  _ Panic gripped his chest, and he struggled to scream out the green ninja’s name. 

“Lloyd!” Cole rushed into the room, Zane close behind him. 

“What’s wrong, what’s happened?” Kai held out his hands, shaking, and attempted once more to light a flame. 

“Shiiiit.” Cole hissed, “Where is he?” Zane raised a hand. 

“In his room. Unconscious, if my sensors are correct. He has a temperature of 40 degrees celsius. That is a high fever.” The others didn’t even wait for him to finish, sprinting to Lloyd’s door. Kai pushed it open hesitantly, and the three of them stepped inside. 

Lloyd was, indeed, unconscious. 

“He’s burning up.” Kai knelt down beside him, “What’s wrong with him? He never gets sick.” And it’s true. Kai  _ cannot  _ recall a single instance of Lloyd being sick. Which is weird, come to think of it. But that wasn’t the problem now. 

“He…” Even Zane seemed at a loss for an explanation. He sat down next to Kai, and the tension in the room flew through the roof. Lloyd didn't get sick, Zane always knew what was wrong, and yet… 

“Has anyone actually seen Lloyd eat since he’s been back?” His head whipped towards Cole, who was leaning against the door frame. He rubbed his arms nervously, and now Kai was concerned for him too. 

“Why, Cole?” Thank god for Zane. 

“Oh, uh, um… back when I, uh, was at the performing arts school… The people who had anorexia, there were a few, they’d get sick really easily. And… uh, he looks.. Kinda thinner than I remember.” It took a few seconds for Kai to register what he’d said. 

“You think Lloyd… has anorexia?” Lloyd  _ couldn’t  _ have an eating disorder, surely, someone would have  _ noticed _ … Except, actually, they’d stopped having sit-down meals, and the only person who got checked up on was Jay, because he always forgot to eat… so no one would  _ know  _ if Lloyd  _ had  _ stopped eating. Had Lloyd stopped eating? Lloyd…

Lloyd was okay, Lloyd  _ had  _ to be okay,  _ they finally had him back,  _ what if he was lost again?

And this time… if he died, he wouldn’t come back. He wasn’t a robot, like Zane. There was no harddrive for  _ Lloyd.  _

“Breathe, Kai.” Cole was on the floor now, too, and  _ shit shit shit  _ had he started hyperventilating? Of _ course  _ he had. Actually, they all had, he realised, watching Cole’s shoulders shake with the effort of keeping his own breaths calm and controlled. Zane didn’t even  _ need  _ to breathe, but Kai was pretty sure that he was breathing now, short and fast. 

“What... what do we do? Zane…?” 

***

“Lloyd has an eating disorder?” Jay raised an eyebrow at Cole, peering around a large mech as he screws in a bolt. 

“Apparently…” Well, not apparently. Cole  _ knows  _ eating disorders, and Lloyd doesn’t look good. Jay laughed weakly, but Cole glared at him before he could say anything else. “Not in the mood for dark humor, Jay.” The boy shrugged, and went back to his project. 

“What are we going to do?” Cole sighed, biting back his initial response.  _ Exactly what we would do if we found out otherwise. Watch him, find him a therapist, the usual.  _

“Wait.” He settled on, instead. Because they would. And once he woke up… well, they’d deal with that then. 

They’d dealt with stupid mental stuff before. All of them. And yeah, sure, usually it worked as a buddy system, he and Jay, Kai and Zane, Nya split between Kai and Jay, but Lloyd… He’d always been the little brother. The sheltered baby, the one that they protected from their mental shittyness. 

And yet… and yet, here they were. 

Cole burst into tears. Luckily, Jay couldn’t tell, because he was hiding behind his hands, curled up into a ball on the stool Jay and Nya left out for visitors to the workshop. 

He heard Jay drop something, a harsh metal clang on the floor, followed by swearing, and he decided that actually, he probably could tell. 

It was just that… Lloyd. They’d tried so hard to keep him safe. He was  _ everything  _ to all of them. Green ninja or not, they’d basically raised him. They’d definitely screwed up (a lot), but he was  _ theirs. Their  _ little brother, no one else’s. 

He was  _ special,  _ because he was their  _ world.  _

The weeks he had been with Morro had been  _ torture.  _ Every second was agony, waiting,  _ waiting,  _ for  _ any  _ sign that their Lloyd was coming back to them.

“Cole…” Jay’s arms wrapped around him gently, holding tighter and tighter, like Jay couldn’t bear to lose Cole, either. But Jay didn’t need to worry about him, it was  _ Lloyd, Lloyd needed them, they needed to go help... _

“GUYS, LLOYD’S AWA- shit, Cole, you right there, buddy?” Cole wanted nothing more than to simply cease to exist. The buddy system wasn’t  _ particularly  _ solid, it wasn’t like Kai was forbidden from seeing him upset, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t horribly uncomfortable for them both. 

Besides, that’s why Kai’s Zane’s buddy. So that he doesn’t have to look after anyone, too much. Zane has Pixal, afterall, so there’s no need to send Kai into a panic attack.

But Cole’s meant to be their rock, the strong one, the stoic one, and here he is… 

“Lloyd’s awake?” Jay stood between him and Kai, and Cole smiled, albeit shakily, at the back of him, gratefully.

“Yeah. Zane’s giving him a proper look-over now.”

***

Zane, logically, could probably shut off his emotions. He had never tried, but admittedly, he’d never really wanted to, either. 

He did now, though. 

_ You could try pretending not to have emotions,  _ P.I.X.A.L buzzed in his head. 

“I need a list of everything you’ve consumed in the past twenty-four hours, please.” A cold, calculating medic. He could do that. 

“I don’t have food poisoning.” Lloyd crossed his (thin, much too thin) arms, eyebrows raised.

“That’s not what I asked, Lloyd.” His voice trembled slightly, betraying his apathetic act. 

_ You would not make a very good actor anyway, do not worry.  _

Lloyd seemed to shrink into his bed, but he didn’t say anything. Of course, he should have expected this. Lloyd was stubborn on a  _ good  _ day. And this was  _ not  _ a good day. 

“You are going to have to tell me eventually.” He softened his voice. The gentler approach had always worked better, he wasn’t really sure why he’d tried the harsh one. 

_ You don’t want to be concerned about Lloyd. I am sorry, I thought that approach might help you.  _

“I haven’t… eaten much. In a while.” 

_ Zane…? Zane, you can’t just shut down.  _

_ I can’t help him, either.  _

_ Not like this, you can’t. Where’s the Zane I know? _

_ I can’t hh- _

_ I c-c aaa _

_ You’re glitching, Zane. This might be caused by your excessive panic. I’m going to try a human technique on you now.  _

_ Count to 7. You’ve shut down your body, so you can’t breathe, but imagine inhaling.  _

_ Now count to 8, and hold your figurative breath.  _

_ Okay. Exhale… or imagine it, and count down from 4.  _

“That’s okay, Lloyd. Would you be able to tell me why?” Zane’s voice was flat. 

Somewhere, in the depths that were his consciousness, he’d found an emotional off-switch.

_ Zane…?  _

“I forget to eat.” Lloyd’s heart rate increased. 

“I’m going to get Jay to talk to you about that. In the meantime, please do not exert yourself. The fever was hard enough to break the first time.”

“Okay.” His heart rate did not change, but it would in time. He would be fine.

“Once you eat something, please take this, it will help keep your temperature from rising.” Ibuprofen. An anti-inflammatory drug that would aid with any pains Lloyd might experience, as well as keeping the fever at bay.

He exited the room quickly and quietly. He needed to find Jay, to finish his task of looking after Lloyd. 

_ Why Jay? _

“One of my memory files has the title ‘Jay - Eating’ and I have a regular alert to remind him to eat.” He stated, after checking that the corridor was empty. Talking to P.I.X.A.L out loud wasn’t polite when there were others around, as they could not hear her. 

_ I see.  _

_ That memory file appears to be locked. Would you like me to access it for you? _

“No.” There were usually good reasons that Zane’s memory files were locked.

***

“Jay. Talk to Lloyd about eating, please.” Zane’s voice was more robotic than usual, and he seemed exhausted. Not that Jay needed to worry about that, as Zane was asking him to take over and worry about  _ Lloyd,  _ and this stupid day was being impossibly taxing on them all, but… 

“Sure, yeah, whatever.” Zane wasn’t the only exhausted one. “Look after the messes…” he gestured loosely at the workshop. 

He didn’t want to enter Lloyd’s room, truth be told. He’d just watched Kai have a panic attack, and Cole fall apart. Zane, he was pretty sure, had completely shut down. 

What was waiting for him on the other side of the door?

He lent against the frame, nudging the door so that he could see Lloyd. The poor kid looked so  _ scared.  _ He looked like he had when he’d first started living with them. So small, and helpless… 

He  _ needed  _ them. 

“Hey, Llo…” Jay kept his voice low, wary of startling the green ninja.

“Jay!” Lloyd’s face broke into a grin, relief flooding his features, “You can tell me what’s going on, right?”

“Yeah, sure, kiddo.” Jay’s memory lapsed, and the old nickname slipped out. It was one Kai and Cole used more than he ever did, but it felt… right for the situation. “You’ve caught a flu or somethin’, because not eating makes your immune system weak.”

“Oh… sorry.” 

“You’ve got nothing to apologise for. But you do need to eat. Will you be okay for the next hour or so? Zane’s not feeling so great, so food might be a bit of a wait.”

“Zane’s a nindroid. He  _ can’t  _ get sick.” Lloyd looked at him skeptically. Jay resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course, only Lloyd would think he was lying without any real motivation.

“He’s not sick. He’s just not feeling so great.” When he didn’t get a response, he continued.

“Here’s the thing, Lloyd… As you get older, things like this are going to become… worse. You’re going to find out about a lot of things, many of which  _ suck,  _ and one of those things that will come first… that’s mental health.” Jay rubbed the back of his neck with a sigh. He had the  _ worst  _ mental health of the four (original) ninja. He’d had an eating disorder, selfharmed, nearly… well, he didn’t like to think about what had very nearly happened  _ that  _ night. But the point remained. He was the only one in regular therapy.  _ He was the most unstable _ . It didn’t make sense, for him to be the strong one, talking to Lloyd, explaining everything.

“So.. what’s wrong with Zane...?” Lloyd’s voice quavered slightly, and it reminded Jay that he wasn’t the only person freaking out. “Zane’s gone into what we refer to as emotional shutdown. I… It’s kinda my thing, but uh… He seems to have done that. Which isn’t good, or healthy, um…”

“And that’s my fault.”

“It’s no one’s fault. Sometimes these things happen. Like you not eating. That’s a mental health thing.” Jay shrugged. 

“An eating disorder. I’m not  _ that  _ oblivious.” Lloyd frowned, an embarrassed blush spreading across his face. 

“Yeah. You might have an eating disorder. Which is totally okay! Morro  _ did  _ starve you, and you  _ did  _ lose your dad. There’s nothing wrong with having one, you’re not bad or weak or anything, but if you  _ do  _ have a disorder, then you’re going to need some help to beat it.”

“Okay.” Jay felt his body untense. It was all going to be fine, now. 

Sure, there would be the  _ exciting  _ experience of explaining to Lloyd why the ninja already  _ had  _ an ‘eating watch’, and it would probably mean Lloyd would find out about Kai’s panic attacks, and Cole’s… mess. 

But that could wait. Lloyd just needed help, first.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeeeeah I wrote that, huh.  
> Jay was based on Ninagogirl of Wattpad's headcanons for him, which I adopted slightly. Read her fic [here](https://www.wattpad.com/532419002-depression-a-ninjago-fanfiction-completed-chapter)  
> I made up my own stuff for everyone else.  
> Hope you liked it, kudos and comment if you did! I'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
